Part 14 (1/2)

”Like a stray from the Humane Society?”

”What are you talking about? You're my best friend.”

”If I was your boyfriend boyfriend we'd see how racist they really were.” we'd see how racist they really were.”

Robin almost says, But you're not, But you're not, which seems exactly the wrong thing, though he doesn't understand why. George turns up the music, too loud. He accelerates again, and Robin feels pushed back into his seat. The conversation is over, but the hostility buzzes in the air like a persistent mosquito. Melancholy settles around Robin like a net, barely keeping their harsh words at bay. which seems exactly the wrong thing, though he doesn't understand why. George turns up the music, too loud. He accelerates again, and Robin feels pushed back into his seat. The conversation is over, but the hostility buzzes in the air like a persistent mosquito. Melancholy settles around Robin like a net, barely keeping their harsh words at bay.

The radio s.h.i.+fts to James Brown panting to a crackling beat-the lyrics all s.e.xual innuendo.

A half mile down the road, George swerves suddenly into a tiny gas station that looks like an abandoned farmhouse, except for the two pumps advertising a brand Robin's never heard of.

A stern, pale-faced woman in a kerchief takes her time moving across the gravel, scrutinizing the Cadillac as she approaches. She peers into the backseat, as if there's something half-hidden there. Over James Brown singing from the back of his throat, she asks, ”What're you boys doing out this way?”

George just glares at her, so Robin leans across him and answers, ”We're driving down the sh.o.r.e. From Philly.”

George says, ”Did you just call me boy boy?”

The woman emits a stunned little grunt.

”Because I don't have to buy my gas here.”

She says, ”Mm-hmm,” as if confirming a suspicion, and then backs away, her lips tight.

George twists the key in the ignition and within moments is tearing back onto the road, tires shrieking a protest. Robin looks at him, astonished.

A couple minutes later, a police car appears behind them and stays there for a mile, a couple car-lengths back, like a hawk tailing its prey.

”Jesus Christ!” George exclaims. ”Are we in South Jersey or South Carolina?”

”You think that lady called the cops?”

”Apparently I was black enough for her her.”

The squad car pulls alongside, the cop at the wheel peering at them, all scrutiny. Gradually he moves past before at last speeding away. Robin takes a deep breath, but George remains on alert, his fingers so tight on the steering wheel his knuckles blanch.

The miles roll by, marked by the whoosh of the road and the radio.

Robin rests his cheek against the window, wis.h.i.+ng he could roll it down, wanting to smoke, mystified. It all happened so quickly.

A song comes on that he recognizes, ”Let's Stay Together.” It's not the version on the Tina Turner record that he bought last year but a man with a sort of high-pitched voice. Marvin Gaye? Teddy Pender-gra.s.s? There's a whole era of music, late sixties to early seventies, that he doesn't know much about. He hadn't actually known that Tina's version was a remake. It's a little deflating to find out that a song you're into, that has the crackle of something new, is a retread of something else; what felt like a discovery becomes tarnished. This is the kind of observation he would have made to Peter as they drove around Pittsburgh, popping tapes in the ca.s.sette player, sharing with each other their favorites, keeping a running commentary. At this very moment Peter is likely driving in the exact opposite direction, back toward Pittsburgh, and that kid Douglas might be with him, playing his own mix for Peter. Change is already in motion: Douglas will move on in, share Peter's bed, make breakfast for him before his first cla.s.s of the day. He'll become for Peter a safe, young, trouble-free boyfriend. The anti-Robin. The remake.

The song gets taken over by static. They've fallen out of range. He decides he prefers the original version better, the way Al Green sounds both needy and absolutely sure of himself at the same time. Al Green. Al Green. He's remembered! How does he even know that? Because it's something George taught him. He's remembered! How does he even know that? Because it's something George taught him.

He looks to George, who stares straight ahead, unflinching. Robin says, ”OK, not to make excuses, but I just got dumped by my boyfriend, and then my sister goes AWOL, and so to get criticized by you about my job, which was your idea to begin with...I'm a little touchy today.”

”Don't take it out on me.”

”Well, you're not exactly relaxed, relaxed, either.” either.”

After what seems like five minutes, but is probably thirty seconds, George finally looks at him. ”It's like this,” he says, pus.h.i.+ng his gla.s.ses up, a gesture Robin has seen him do a hundred times: logical George, ready to present his case. ”If I was any blacker, that cop would have pulled us over. And if I was any less black I'd get my a.s.s whooped in West Philly, living with a gay white boy like you.”

”OK, I probably shouldn't have,” Robin begins. ”I'm not sure why I...” Just apologize. Just apologize. ”I'm sorry I was talking s.h.i.+t back there.” ”I'm sorry I was talking s.h.i.+t back there.”

”And if you're not into working at Rosellen's, you shouldn't stay. If you're not into living with me, ditto.”

”Do you want me to move out?” Robin asks, alarmed.

”No.”

”Because I like living with you, even if it sometimes sucks for me in that neighborhood. Maybe if I could get another job...”

”If you quit, you'd probably just go back to Pittsburgh and throw yourself at that hairy white boy. Which would be a mistake.”

”You sound pretty sure about that.”

”I have a prediction,” George says.

”What?”

”I predict you're going to be over him really soon.”

Robin smiles, against his will, really, and then, for whatever reason, neither of them says anything else, and the silence settles in, and it seems like the worst has pa.s.sed. Robin keeps thinking he should say more, explain something, clarify, but letting George have the last word feels intuitively right.

On George's face, in the set of his mouth, perhaps, and in his eyes, s.h.i.+ning behind gla.s.s, Robin sees the best friend he knows so well and, truly, loves so much. The rock-solid George of so many years, peeking out from the new George, who is someone changing and less predictable. This George is deciding who he wants to be and how he wants to see the world. It is this new George he was trying to wound with words, this new George who'd rightfully gotten angry in return.

Without warning Robin is overtaken by a fluttering of heat rising up through him. It opens like a tiny bud on a branch, in the air after a storm. There is pulsing energy inside this feeling, and he understands that it's this new George who makes him feel this way. The more confident one. The one who wanted to take control. The one he had really exciting s.e.x with, who read the tea leaves this morning and saw more in their future. This morning, George called it a rebound f.u.c.k, but rebound rebound doesn't cover it. This is something else. You can learn a lot from someone like this, someone who isn't afraid of who he is. doesn't cover it. This is something else. You can learn a lot from someone like this, someone who isn't afraid of who he is.

Unpopulated countryside gives way to the loose density of coastal towns, their names identified on water towers that loom above the landscape like giant eggs. On Route 37, in the town of Toms River (”Where's the apostrophe?” George wonders out loud), the traffic thickens. It's even heavier in the outbound direction, as a congested stream of weekenders heads back home. These are the folks who leave the sh.o.r.e at four o'clock to beat the evening rush and wind up creating an afternoon rush of their own.

The highway funnels eastward onto a drawbridge that arcs over the bay. Robin has a memory of stopping near the top of this bridge, as a kid, marveling as the road snapped up in front of them. He'd been in the backseat, licking at dripping ice cream, a braided swirl of vanilla and orange sherbet, while Jackson leaned across him to gawk at the boats cutting through the pa.s.sage below and Ruby wanted to know if cars ever fell into the gap. It all comes back to him: the summer heat, the sweet melting cone, the road splitting open and stopping the world for a moment. From that long ago day to this one seems like a journey of loss: not just of his brother, of his family's cohesiveness, but of wonder, of awe. When was the last time he even enjoyed ice cream without guilt? (Probably before his fellow actors started bombarding him with cautionary edicts like, ”If you want to do film roles, the camera adds ten pounds.” And this was also when he started getting more self-conscious about being naked in front of other guys, worrying about his body, fretting over little folds of excess flesh pinched between his fingers.) Today the bridge lies flat. Up and over they go, down the other side to the coastal island, into the town of Seaside Heights.

He guides George through the grid of streets, windows lowered, salt air on the breeze. It's a comforting smell, a childhood smell. For a moment, it blankets his apprehension about Ruby with something benign: this is where people have fun in the water and thrills on the boardwalk, where s.e.xy strangers wear skimpy clothes. How can something go wrong here? They locate a parking spot in a lot at the end of the boardwalk. Robin steps from the car and stretches. A breeze rises over the spa.r.s.ely gra.s.sed dunes. All around is a parade of tanned, exposed flesh, pink and bronze and deep olive, bimbos and himbos: girls in bikinis and short-shorts, bare shoulders and cleavage; boys in tank tops and mesh, boys s.h.i.+rtless, boys in snug swim suits, baskets bouncing as they walk. One buff, barefoot dude in OP shorts goes stumbling past, smelling of beer, chasing after a girl and shouting, ”Whaddaya want outta me?” Robin catches George's eye over the roof of the car, and George smirks, saying, ”Don't answer him,” and then Robin puts on his sungla.s.ses and they both laugh.

As they walk to the boardwalk, Robin almost misses sight of Calvin, pacing anxiously at the side of a boxy white building, moving in and out of shadow. He is so disheveled he might be some kind of boardwalk b.u.m, sniffing around the Dumpsters for cast-off pizza crust. His face has the pallor of the undead. His hair never looks clean, but it's almost repulsive now, matted down on one side and clumped up in other places. His black trench coat, a kind of anti-fas.h.i.+on statement in Manhattan, is a complete anomaly in Seaside Heights, a red flag: avoid this unstable person. Fresh anger ripples through Robin: of course course Ruby wouldn't stick with this guy, he doesn't take care of himself and doesn't look like someone who would take care of his girlfriend, either. He thinks of the attention Ruby has always given to her own appearance, all that time she spent locked into the bathroom they shared in Manhattan, emerging with glossy hair, makeup just so. Even in her recent funereal fas.h.i.+on, she's precise, exact. Like him, she's inherited their mother's vanity, her need to keep up appearances. Ruby wouldn't stick with this guy, he doesn't take care of himself and doesn't look like someone who would take care of his girlfriend, either. He thinks of the attention Ruby has always given to her own appearance, all that time she spent locked into the bathroom they shared in Manhattan, emerging with glossy hair, makeup just so. Even in her recent funereal fas.h.i.+on, she's precise, exact. Like him, she's inherited their mother's vanity, her need to keep up appearances.

”Man, am I glad to see you,” Calvin says, extending his hand to Robin, then to George. His grip is too tight, like he's clasping a tree branch to hoist himself out of rus.h.i.+ng water. When Robin takes out his Parliaments, Calvin grabs for the pack, saying, ”I need one of those.” Blowing smoke, he asks them, ”So what's the plan?”

George says, ”You're the last one who saw Ruby. Why don't you tell us us?” He stands a step apart from them on the wooden boardwalk, arms crossed over his T-s.h.i.+rt, eyes a.s.sessing.

Calvin's eyes dart to Robin, as if to confirm that George's ”us” speaks for both of them. It occurs to Robin that Calvin and George have only met once before, in New York around Christmastime last year, when Dorothy invited them all to dinner, and they bonded over how depressing Ronald Reagan's reelection had been. Calvin probably has no idea what to make of George now. ”It's not my fault we're in this mess,” Calvin pleads, sounding suddenly vulnerable, in over his head.

”You left Ruby at a nightclub,” George says.

”What, I'm supposed to drag her down the street while she's telling me, 'I'm not going with you'?”

Robin says, ”Couldn't you have persuaded persuaded her?” her?”