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  He’s aware that he’s just talking, but he’s not sure what else to do. Truth is, being met by Lydia has flummoxed him a little. The years haven’t treated her all that badly. At first glance she looked stout, even matronly, but then he’s taken in by her brashly dyed platinum hair, the enormous, flashy handbag she carries, her too-bright lipstick, the even brighter orange shoes. Once a fag hag, always a fag hag, he thinks—not unkindly. Truth is, he hasn’t thought of her in a long time. Before Anatole’s email out of the blue, he hadn’t thought of any of them. He’s suddenly shy about meeting Anatole. Communing with the river’s a postponement, but then so much in his life has been a postponement.

  He wonders if Anatole’s sent Lydia to pick him up as a way of postponing as well.

  In the little park at the bottom of Main Street, old men and young mothers sit on benches, reading the paper, eating sandwiches, staring into space. A radio plays that catchy, annoying song he’s been hearing at the drinking club in the Rumukoroshe compound for the last couple of months. In the old days he’d have known who the singer was, but now he has no idea. He lights another cigarette and stares into space as well: the brown, implacable, magnificent river, framed by the pleasingly Art Deco suspension bridge to the south, and to the north the great derelict hulk of the train bridge...

  “...Is now the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park,” Lydia explains. “All paved and fenced in and safe. It’s been a huge success. A half million visitors a year, or something like that. Hard to believe. I’ll take you out on it. It’s not scary at all—it’s like being out on a big pier. And the views are to die for.”

  He notices now the protective fence, the festive flags. He used to find that ruin intensely poetic—a kind of symbol for everything that was wrong and beautiful about Poughkeepsie. He used to dare himself to sneak past the fences and venture out some night, but he never quite worked up the courage. Now tourists stroll there. It’s OK: he went on to do far more dangerous and necessary things.

  A weekend in Poughkeepsie’s small potatoes compared to the life he’s chosen. Still, he wonders why he’s elected to put himself through it. He’s staying at the Inn at the Falls, where he’s arranged to have a rental car dropped off. Habits die hard: he’s spent the best part of a decade relying on a set of wheels, a ready kit, some body armor, and sunglasses. Not to mention his own private arsenal.

  He hears himself say, “Yeah, that might be fun to go out there. I mean, why come all this way and not be a tourist?”

  When was the last time he said “that might be fun?”

  At Reflexion, Anatole keeps darting back and forth to the big window over Main Street. A lady cop is writing parking tickets. A Hispanic fellow on a bicycle is having a jovial shouting match with a large, dreadlocked Jamaican; the man on the bicycle keeps circling back so he won’t drift out of earshot. Each return provokes a new outburst. They both seem to be enjoying their quarrel so much they don’t want it to end. Moving from car to car like a cat investigating a garden, the cop ignores them.

  For thirty years he’s been calling it his window on the world. It’s a symptom of latent ADD, no doubt, but the truth is, he focuses better when he’s distracting himself. Daniel used to joke he depended on that window the way other people depend on television.

  Right now he’s anticipating his first glimpse of Chris. Why this anxiety? Maybe he’s still in love. (He popped a Xanax a while ago, but it hasn’t helped.)

  Nonsense, he tells himself, returning his attention to Carole Braunschweig and her unruly mass of hair. He’s been candid with Rafa. It’s self-indulgent, I know, maybe just plain selfish. But I want Chris to be here. Maybe what I want is to let him know that I’m OK. I didn’t get destroyed, I didn’t get sick. I survived. Maybe I want to see if any of that matters to him.

  And Rafa has reminded him, calmly, as is Rafa’s way, that he’s got three, count them, three former lovers coming to the wedding. So surely Anatole can have just one.

  Anatole’s never told him Chris was not technically a lover—but since when is love about technicalities? It almost worries him that Rafa’s so trusting. Most of the time that trust feels like maturity; only occasionally does it feel like—a kind of indifference? A kind of delusional self-confidence? But Rafa’s neither indifferent nor delusional. He’s just, well, Rafa—the computer geek with near-magical abilities, the good dancer with terrible taste in music, the fabulous cook who takes photos of his creations and posts them on Facebook, the avid bicyclist who’s even found a way to automatically post his cycling stats from that day’s bike ride. Why anyone would want to post such things is something Anatole’s never figured out, but there you have it, Rafael Pujol’s personality in a nutshell: generous, extroverted, a little exhibitionist, completely oblivious, totally adorable.

  “I’m thinking of trying this new rinse,” he tells Carole, running his fingers through her imperial mane.

  Then once again to the window, and this time Anatole catches sight of his quarry. They walk unhurriedly, Lydia in animated conversation, Chris smoking, leisurely turning his head from side to side as if to take in everything. It’s like seeing a ghost. Anatole tests his heart; there’s a frightened rabbit cowering in his chest. They’ve disappeared from sight; they’re coming up the stairs. He’s sorry for Carole—her hair, rather. Little does she know how dramatically it’s diminished in importance. And her husband’s the assistant D.A.

  Then they’re in the salon. Heads turn. And why shouldn’t they? A deeply tanned, strikingly handsome man, no longer young, stands before them all. Chris’s hair’s been brutally shorn—he used to have such beautiful locks—and Anatole instantly assesses the reason: he’d be showing a bald spot if his hair were longer. It’s the way to go. Forget the comb-over. Just be fierce. Embrace baldness for what it is. Really short hair on men can be incredibly hot.

  Chris is smiling—ruefully, it would seem, in acknowledgment of everything: his disappearance, the long silence, the missed years.

  Anatole moves toward him. Chris puts out his hand, but Anatole’s not having that. He blusters right into a hug that seems to catch Chris off guard. Chris, he reminds himself, never liked to get touched. There was a time when Anatole fantasized about what it would be like to make love to Chris. Lydia and Leigh had succeeded—if that’s the right word—where he failed. For a long time he hated both of them for it, but now, as Chris pulls away from his embrace, he’s perhaps glad that he never did. It somehow makes this easier.

  “Long time no see, Kemosabe,” Chris says in that deadpan that used to keep them entertained at Bertie’s. Anatole wishes he could meet it halfway, but he finds himself too flustered.

  “I don’t even know what to say to you, Mister,” he sputters. “I’m just very glad you’re here.”

  “Hey, no problem,” Chris replies—as if he’s just gone a block or two out of his way.

  “We’re not staying,” Lydia says. “I know you’re crazy busy. I just wanted you to see that the package has been safely delivered. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll keep him entertained. We’ll see you at your place at seven, okay?”

  And just like that, they’ve gone. His head is spinning. But that has been the plan all along: work like a banshee till six, then a calm reunion dinner at the little house on Garden Street he and Rafa have been restoring for the last couple of years, and where Rafa is even now doing something wonderful with foodstuffs in the kitchen. Still, he can’t help feeling a little bereft, as if he’s stumbled back into a half-remembered dream where something precious is offered and then snatched away.

  Anatole turns back to Carole. “Sorry about the interruption. An old friend in town for the wedding.”

  “Anatole, dear, you’re crying,” she says. And it’s true. An annoying tear has crept down his cheek. He flicks it away.

  “What can I say,” he tells her, resuming his work. “I’m a sentimental guy.”

  “This is going to be a tremendous weekend for you,” she says.

  Anat
ole’s put on weight. His once well-defined features have gone rubbery; the animated scarecrow’s body Chris remembers as being in constant, hectic motion has gone slack. Not that he looks unhealthy or even unattractive—it’s just disconcerting to see this disconnect between the present and the past.

  “I didn’t mean to hustle us out of there,” Lydia says. “I know Anatole would’ve loved to throw down everything and join us. But he’s got work to do.”

  “Are you thirsty?” Chris asks. “Bertie’s isn’t still around by any chance, is it? I’d love to buy you a drink.”

  “Long gone,” she tells him. “Besides, it’s a little early for a drink, don’t you think?”

  He glances at his watch. Three thirty seems a perfect time for a drink. He’s glad he packed a flask in his overnight bag. Always keep the escape routes open.

  “You’re right,” he tells her. Her abstinence is nearly as disconcerting as Anatole’s weight gain. “So here’s what I want to do,” he announces as a way of retaking charge. “I’d like to check in to the hotel at some point. Maybe grab a quick nap. Then if you give me directions to Anatole’s—”

  “Oh, I’ll come pick you up. Not to worry.”

  “I can manage on my own. I’ve rented a car.”

  “You haven’t changed,” she tells him with a flash of the old Lydia. “Still skittish around the humans.”

  “Now prepare me,” he says as they pass the ice cream and samosa stands that flank the entrance to the Walkway. A series of educational signs detail the history of the river, the considerable engineering feat of the bridge, the fire that ended its working life, the years of dereliction, its transformation into the tourist destination it is today. The Walkway is a ribbon of concrete, peopled by mothers pushing strollers, old couples, bicyclists. “Tell me about this Rafa. I like to know the lay of the land in advance.”

  You’re just meeting Anatole’s husband, Lydia thinks. You’re not reconnoitering. But then he’s seemed strangely on edge since his arrival. He keeps glancing around. Pay attention to me, she wants to tell him, though she’s learned with her son that instructions like that tend to backfire.

  “He’s five years younger than Anatole. Grew up in Washington Heights, works at Marist, which is how I know him. His mom’s Dominican, his dad was a French doctor who ran a clinic in the town where she lived. Passed away a number of years ago. I’m not sure exactly when they came to the States. Rafa can tell you all that when you meet him tonight. His mom’ll be there too. Very creative type, old style bohemian. Paints, does ceramics, makes jewelry—this is one of hers.” Lydia pulls back a sheaf of platinum hair to show off a gaudy orange and blue earring. “I adore her stuff. And she’s still going strong at seventy-something. We should all be so lucky. Oh, and Rafa’s got two sisters who’ll be coming up with their families from the city tomorrow. What else can I say? He’s the best thing that ever happened to Anatole. They’ve been together twelve years, if you can believe it. They’re totally settled and domestic. And I’m not even being ironic when I say that.”

  Chris thinks of Anatole’s binges, his frenetic fleeting crushes on teenage boys, his elations and depressions—everything that made him an anarchic and agreeable companion.

  “Hard to imagine,” he says.

  “Oh, Anatole always wanted to settle down. Even back when you knew him. We both did. It’s just that neither of us had any idea how.”

  “Funny, I don’t remember either of you mentioning it at the time.”

  “We were way too cool to say what we really wanted.”

  “And then you figured it out.”

  “Thank God,” she says. “One or both of us would probably be dead right now if we hadn’t. We’d be like Daniel, poor soul. Getting drunk or high every night. Being hungover every morning. You run out of options at a certain point. You come to understand why everybody else is living the boring life. And it doesn’t look so boring anymore.”

  The sun on the bright concrete reminds Chris that he’s been in slight hangover mode all day, courtesy of a preposterously late night.

  “Tell me more about Daniel,” he says, as they pause, like any tourist, to take in the latest informational placard. “You know, I never liked him all that much. He seemed so…” He searches for the word.

  “Gay?” she says.

  “Not that. Just too…”

  “Campy?” she tries out, and he suddenly remembers a night at Bertie’s, he and Anatole drinking scotch, Daniel at the bar in consummate, platinum drag. And Lydia’s younger brother Craig home from college—fall break it must have been. The details are hazy, but they involve his urging Craig to go talk to that dynamite blonde chick he’d been admiring from afar, and the two of them hitting it off, making out on the dance floor, then disappearing—to Anatole’s prudent alarm and Chris’s schadenfreude—then Craig coming back baffled, frustrated, Daniel as was his wont having ducked out before the inevitable and unwelcome discovery scene, the whole tawdry episode precipitated by nothing other than Chris’s desire to play a punishing little joke—but on whom? On Daniel, whom he didn’t care for (was he just a little jealous of Anatole’s breathless friendship with him?) or on Craig, whom he’d found seethingly attractive?

  Or had the joke been on Chris? Craig was as straight as they came, but what Chris wouldn’t have given to overpower him in a dark alley in some other dimension where everything is possible, everything is allowed.

  He winces to recall that he once slept with Lydia solely because the unattainable Craig Forman was her brother. In a life of many bad acts, that was one.

  Lydia’s been telling him the details of Daniel’s illness. He senses that she’s unfurled this narrative a number of times before. “He wasn’t exactly the best patient,” she recites. “He wouldn’t give up the booze or the drugs, and he kept going off his meds because they made him feel lousy. Anatole was incredibly patient. He had to keep tabs on Daniel to make sure he wasn’t doing something insanely self-destructive. ‘Daniel’s not house-trained,’ he used to complain. They had some terrible fights. Daniel would scream, ‘Just let me fucking die, asshole,’ but Anatole wasn’t having it. He was a saint, really. He saw Daniel through to the very end.”

  “Not to play the devil’s advocate,” Chris ventures, “and, of course, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know, but in the abstract at least, isn’t it sort of selfish to keep somebody alive if they don’t want to stay alive anymore? I mean, if I was Daniel, in that situation, I think I’d have wanted to make as quick an exit as possible.”

  She shakes her head. “Live fast, die young, stay pretty. Please: tell me you got that out of your system years ago.”

  She’s adamant in the way of ex-smokers or drinkers. That tone in itself’s a good enough reason never to give up anything, Chris thinks. “So I guess now you’re going to tell me that I’ve grown old but I haven’t grown up?”

  He’s nettled her. It’s not what he wanted to do, but he’s irritated by the sense she exudes of having finally figured things out.

  Barely two hours into the weekend and they’re at odds with each other. She envies Anatole, back at Reflexion, blissfully unaware of what he and his silly nostalgia have unleashed.

  They’ve come to the edge of the Hudson, that river arising in Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondacks (as a placard has informed them) and flowing south toward Manahatta. As they leave the shore behind, two hundred feet below them, and venture out over the water, the open vista invites their mood to expand as well. Muhheakantuck. River That Flows Two Ways. Chris seizes the chance to reset the tone.

  “I want to hear about life, not death,” he says. “Tell me about your life these days, Lydia. Your family. Who’s this fellow you married? How’d you meet him?”

  “How about the service bay at Friendly Honda?” She’s aware she packages her stories, but that doesn’t stop her from delivering her well-rehearsed account of the time she dropped off her Civic for “D” service and Tom was there with a clipboard to write down the mileag
e and ask about anything she wanted checked out. How he was there at the end of the day when she came back to retrieve the car, some five hundred dollars poorer. This was 1992, and he said, “Um, not to be too delicate about things, but if you haven’t noticed this you might want to,” pointing to her Clinton/Gore bumper sticker that somebody, unbeknownst to her, had vandalized to read Cunt/Gore. They had a laugh, these two complete strangers, and then two days later they ran into each other at ShopRite, and that was pretty much the end of the beginning, as she likes to put it.

  “He’s not the person I ever thought I’d marry. We don’t see eye to eye on much of anything, which I guess is what keeps it interesting. He’s pretty conservative. Dole, Bush, McCain—right down the line. He’ll be pulling the lever for Romney in the fall. But hell, even I might be doing that if the economy tanks any more than it has. He’s not Jewish, but he’s very chivalrous toward my mother, which goes a long, long way with her, since obviously she was dead set on my marrying a Jew. Plus he’s as pro-Israel as you can get.

  “And one other thing. He’s just a tiny bit homophobic, more knee-jerk than anything else, but sometimes that can be a bit of a problem.”

  From this vantage, Poughkeepsie’s a forest from which slender church spires and squat apartment towers rise. To the south, the dark Hudson Highlands; to the north, the blue Catskills. A small plane is making lazy circles above the river. The sound of its engine fades and surges and fades again. Chris catches at a memory, but it recedes before he can grasp it.

  “Will Tom be at the wedding?”

  “Oh, of course. He and Anatole get along well enough. I mean, without me they’d never be friends, but I have to give it to Tom, he’s grown a lot, he’s a lot more open-minded than I’d ever have thought.”

  “And you mentioned a kid,” Chris says nonchalantly.

  “Caleb. Our golden boy. Just turned seventeen. He’ll be a junior at Arlington High this fall. He’s been going through a rough patch, but who doesn’t at that age? Life’s been pretty tough on him at times, but all things considered, he’s doing wonderfully. See, he was born with severely damaged nerve endings in both ears. He got cochlear implants when he was two, and that helped a lot. He even plays drums in a band, if you can believe it. Unfortunately, the insurance didn’t cover a whole lot of the implant cost, so we’ve been pretty strapped. It’s why we live with Mom. We’ve never really been able to get ahead. But it’s been completely worth it. You’ll see when you meet him. Anatole’s helped out where he could. He’s like a mentor to Caleb.”