Above The Thunder Part 2

"I can't sleep, either." She paused. "Anyway, one of the doctors at school today asked me to pick my most compa.s.sionate student to lead a support group."

"Uh-huh," Greta said, and Anna heard her exhale cigarette smoke.

"Isn't that a mystery?"

"Why? What do you mean?"

"How would I possibly know if someone's compa.s.sionate?"

"What do you mean? Of course you know. Someone is either open or they're closed. They can feel another person's trouble and anguish or they can't."

Anna said that made sense, but deep down she suspected that this trait, along with the maternal one, had never been activated in her. She doubted if it was possible to understand someone else's suffering. Even her beloved husband whose pain had become a private geography on which she couldn't trespa.s.s.

Anna listened to Greta's lengthy examples of what compa.s.sion was. "Well," Anna said finally. "I'll be up for another hour or so grading papers so come over for tea if you want."

"Okay," Greta said, and sighed.

"And I might be calling you back to ask your opinion on whether you think forgiveness exists outside of biblical myths."

Greta laughed. "Oh, do tell."

"Nothing. It's all c.r.a.p," Anna said, and hung up.

TWO.

BODY OF THE BELOVED.

From the window of their Back Bay apartment, Stuart watched Jack down on the street corner talking to the tiny Italian shoemaker, Mr. Fabrizi. He seemed to have taken up residence in the coffee shop next to the Korean grocery where Stuart and Jack shopped. Fabrizi came racing out to say h.e.l.lo every time he spotted Jack. Stuart could usually get by the window with just a friendly wave, but Jack was a verbal hostage to the scenes and tribulations of Mr. Fabrizi's life. Who knew why.

Mr. Fabrizi was gesturing wildly, the way he did when he talked about shoddy workmanship or how he couldn't break the habit of shining his wife's shoes every day even though she'd been dead over a year. Jack was nodding continuously, shifting from one foot to the other.

Stuart went into the kitchen to check the bread. Another ten minutes. He clothed the naked David magnets on the refrigerator with red panties from Venus. Stuart had been cooking most of the day. Their friends Leila and Jane were coming tonight to discuss what Jack called the Tykes for d.y.k.es campaign: the women hadn't actually declared their desire for a child, only that there was something they wanted to talk about. Jack insisted it had to be about conception.

"Why else does a lesbian couple want to have dinner with a couple of beat-up f.a.gs?" Jack had asked earlier.

"Maybe they simply want our company. Friendship, Jack, remember that? People who you don't necessarily work for, sleep with, or want something from."

"Right, sweetheart, what world do you live in and where can I sign on?" He'd grabbed his wallet from the hall table. The Korean grocery was just around the corner. "Saffron, a pinch. Anything else?"

"No. That should do it. If for some reason they don't have fresh saffron, don't accept a subst.i.tute herb." The last time Stuart was in there looking for fresh rosemary, he'd somehow been hoodwinked into buying chervil, by the owner, Mrs. Kim. She insisted it would do "miracles" for lamb if he beat it with egg whites and basted every half an hour. The meat had ended up with a texture like milk jugs and a taste like lawn clippings.

"Back in a flash," Jack said, holding open an imaginary coat.

At the window, Stuart saw Jack was still at the corner, talking now to a young man. Jack held a brown grocery sack on his hip, which meant it was stuffed and heavy. He could never buy small quant.i.ties of anything. But if Stuart had sent him for saffron and coconut milk-which he could have used-Jack would be holding two bags. All of their household items were family size, huge bottles of shampoo that would be replaced with another kind before they'd used even half. When Stuart cleaned the bathroom last Sat.u.r.day, he'd counted six bottles of shampoo, four conditioners-two deep, one daily, and a leave-in-and seven bars of soap. The cabinets and drawers were crammed with medicines for every possible ailment, foreign and domestic, including, Stuart saw with horror, Vagisil.

"Jack, there's very little chance either one of us is going to be afflicted with minor feminine itching."

"What?" Jack had called in from the living room.

"What's this Vagisil doing in here?" The package, thank G.o.d, was unopened.

"I bought it, what do you think?" Jack said.

"Why?"

"It was in the sale bin at Rite-Aid."

"Oh, Jesus wept."

"Crocodile tears," Jack called back. "And it's not inconceivable that we could have female guests. My sister could come to visit. Don't throw it away, Stuart."

"Really, Jack. What are the odds that your sister would visit, first of all, and second, arrive with an itchy booty?"

"Itchy booty." Jack laughed. "Your talk of itchy booties is lost on me, darling. I can't tell one j.a.panese car from another."

Stuart took the bread out of the oven and set the table with the good china for their guests-he knew Jane would appreciate the Wedgwood plates. Jane was the first to befriend them when they moved from San Francisco a year ago. She was in personnel at the investment firm where Jack worked. Neither Stuart nor Jack had really wanted to leave San Francisco, but the Boston office had offered to double Jack's salary and it seemed foolish not to take it. Both agreed that if either one of them didn't acclimate well to New England they would move back. So far, Stuart didn't like it much here. The general atmosphere of the city struck him as distinctly unfriendly, one of suspicion and distrust. Partly it was that he missed his studies, the routines of academia. He'd been enrolled in the Ph.D. program at San Francisco State, working on an interdisciplinary doctorate in anthropology and art-specifically, the relationship between color and design patterns in Incan pottery and the culture's rituals and habits. His preliminary thesis linked human sacrifice and geometric landscape patterns on bowls. Stuart's theory was, the greater the culture's strife, the more intricate and beautifully bright the pottery. In the Bay Area, there was a private anitiquities collector who trusted Stuart enough to give him a set of keys to his loft. Stuart came and went as he pleased, sat for hours in front of ancient grain bowls and ceremonial chalices.

Stuart hadn't yet found a doctoral program in Boston that seemed like the perfect match, but B.U. offered enough courses to keep him interested until he figured out where he wanted to study. Things would work out if he was patient. Jack was thriving, and for now, that was enough.

This coming October would be their ten-year anniversary. They'd met in a twenty-four-hour Walgreens in San Francisco. Stuart had run in for nighttime cold medicine. In aisle one, an obese woman flanked by two policemen was praying to Saint Cecilia and opening packages of curlers. "You know you have to buy those curlers," the policemen kept saying, but the woman went on rolling up her hair and shooing them away. In the pharmacy, the pharmacist was banging on the bulletproof Plexiglas and shouting at three boys who were stuffing their pockets with vitamins. By the time he'd come around and unlocked the door the boys had run out of the store, right past the cops guarding Saint Cecelia's acolyte. Stuart hung around the medicine aisle pretending to study labels so he could see how the commotion would turn out. A man dressed in a pink bathrobe and scuffy pink slippers, hair slicked back under a scarf and a fully made-up face, wheeled his cart past Stuart. He shook his head. "This place is getting so crazy," he said, nodding at the woman with the curlers. His cart had nothing in it but cosmetics. Stuart chose a bottle of NyQuil then stood in line while the pharmacist gave a description of the boys to the cops, who had the curler thief in handcuffs. Pink Scuffy wheeled up behind him, humming, and opening his package of press-on nails. The man in front of Stuart turned around to see who was behind him, then smiled at Stuart.

They exchanged small talk. He said his name was Jack. He was the handsomest man Stuart had ever seen in his life. By the time they left the store, Jack had mentioned a relay-for-life walkathon the following Sat.u.r.day, a benefit for the Bay Area AIDS a.s.sociation. Maybe Jack would see him there. At this point in his life, Stuart had considered himself bis.e.xual. For the past three years, he'd been living with a j.a.panese woman he thought he would marry. He loved Roberta, loved their camaraderie and ordered life, but it wasn't until he met Jack that he realized how being in love truly felt. Before now, he'd scoffed at claims of pa.s.sion, thought anyone who blamed desperate or extreme acts on being in love was mentally ill at worst, too dependent on Hollywood depictions at best. Certainly, he felt pangs of tenderness when he was away from Roberta. But seeing Jack again had engendered a whole new feeling, as though his skin was electrified and stretching away from his muscles and bones, his body instinctively making a s.p.a.ce for what he didn't know, until now, was love.

The day of the relay Stuart spent most of the afternoon threading his way through the crowds looking for Jack. He finally spotted him when the group ended up in Golden Gate Park for a picnic. Stuart watched Jack from a distance, felt something like sickness rise up in him: a man like Jack would never, he thought, be interested in the likes of him-soft, doughy, the scent of a woman and a woman's ways clinging to him. Looking at Jack-G.o.d, with his shirt off now-Stuart realized how much he'd let himself go. He'd always preferred libraries to gyms, theater to sports, but his body had never felt this lumpish and thick before. He looked around at the men at the picnic, admired some of them, was indifferent to others, but no one had the magnetic power Jack had. Stuart felt an ache when he looked at Jack, deep in his gut, like the emptiness of hunger. Stuart circled closer to him, stood in the group next to Jack-the men were three deep around him. Jack didn't once look his way.

Later, the crowd thinned to just a dozen men, Jack included, all of whom seemed to know each other. One of them suggested tequila shots at a bar around the corner and Stuart, though he promised Roberta he'd be home early, went along.

At the bar-a working-cla.s.s, blue-collar place where all the men looked like pipefitters or union electricians-Stuart sat between Jack and another man from the relay, a blond in his early thirties with pockmarked skin and a '70s layered haircut, who gave Stuart dirty looks for getting the seat next to Jack.

This close to Jack, Stuart felt light-headed. He was gorgeous, by anybody's standards, his eyes not quite brown, not precisely green. When Stuart was a boy, he spent hours lying on his back under the birch tree in his backyard. The late autumn light on the underside of its leaves was what Jack's eyes reminded him of.

Stuart watched him for an hour before Jack spoke to him. Expressions moved across his face slowly, elegantly, like the pa.s.sing shadows of clouds over mountains.

Just as Stuart was about to give up and go home to Roberta, Jack turned to him. "I know we've met somewhere, but I can't place you at the moment. I'm Jack."

Stuart took his hand, was so fl.u.s.tered that he could barely speak his name. Jack asked if he was new to the Bay Area; clearly he didn't remember the night at Walgreen's. "I came here four years ago. When I graduated from college, I moved here."

"Oh? Four years?" he said, and Stuart heard the reproach in his tone: So what the h.e.l.l took you so long to find us?

Jack looked him up and down. Stuart cursed himself for not being in better shape, for tucking his T-shirt into his jeans so that his love handles were clearly visible when he slouched on the stool. His stomach was none too flat, either. He caught his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. His skin and hair looked all right; he had gotten a bit of sun and his hair was going golden, the way it always did in the summer. Jack watched Stuart watching himself.

"The answer is yes," Jack said suddenly.

"Pardon?" Stuart turned to him.

"You were wondering if I found you attractive. The answer is yes." He smiled.

"How can you presume to know what I was wondering?"

Jack laughed. "Sorry." He laughed again. "No offense."

Stuart shrugged. "None taken."

That was the beginning of his new life. It was that simple. All his agonizing over how or if he should come out was answered that Sat.u.r.day. They'd gone back to Jack's place that night, and it was three days before he called Roberta. When he finally did go back to tell her and to collect his things, she wasn't angry or hysterical or accusatory. When he said, "I met someone," she guessed right away that it was a man. "How could you know that?" Stuart asked, incredulous.

"You were the only one who didn't know. I always knew it was just a matter of time."

In the end, they'd remained friends, though Jack became increasingly hostile when, in the beginning, Stuart met her for coffee or had her over to watch a video. She stopped coming over after a while. The last Stuart had heard, Roberta had gotten married and moved to Paris.

Stuart went back to the window to see where Jack was: still in the same place, talking to the unfamiliar young man. Who the h.e.l.l was he? A boy, from what Stuart could see, a young man's hips and shoulders. Lanky, with the loose-jointed posture of a runner. "Pathetic, Jack," Stuart said aloud, and turned away. He no longer allowed himself to feel jealousy; Jack would always have men around him, would always be able to charm and enchant and seduce. At thirty-eight, Jack was still young enough to get the babies if he wanted; though many of the young ones were as unbearable and conservative as straight boys. This generation frowned on promiscuity and unsafe s.e.x, was almost schoolmarmish in their dedication to healthy food, exercise, and monogamy. A good thing, in Stuart's opinion. The option of being conventional didn't exist when he was twenty-two. Back then, it was stay in the closet or come out in the margins.

Stuart walked into the kitchen when he heard Jack's heavy footsteps on the stairs, dumped the veal in the skillet to brown.

"Saffron boy is back," Jack said.

"That's a pretty big bag for such a little spice."

"Well, I bought some rhubarb and plantains, too."

"Super."

"I thought you could make rhubarb pie."

"Oh?"

"Or, maybe not. Whatever. What time are the bush-bangers due?"

Stuart looked over at him. He hated this side of Jack, hostility splashing like a leaky battery over everything and everyone he cared about. "Cool your jets," Stuart said.

Jack laughed, mocking. "Cool my jets? Really. Twenty-first century to Stuart, h.e.l.lo? Cool my jets?" He pulled the vegetable oil from the cabinet overhead, took down a skillet.

Stuart looked over. "What are you going to do?"

"Fry plantains. Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Malawi and ate so many fried plantains I s.h.i.t yellow and green for four days?"

In his early twenties, Jack spent two years in the Peace Corps, building bridges and teaching English. "Only about seventeen times," Stuart said.

"Cool your jest," Jack said.

"Anyway, plantains don't fit in with what I'm making."

"So? Who says it's for them? I want a snack. This is for me."

"You'll ruin your appet.i.te."

"Never. I am a man of considerable appet.i.tes. I thought you knew that about me."

Stuart ignored him. It was best to just let Jack work himself out of this kind of mood. It no doubt had something to do with the boy in front of the grocery. Jack probably wanted to sleep with him, Stuart suspected, and either the boy didn't flirt back or Jack pulled back before it got to that point. Stuart was certain Jack had cheated on him twice since they'd been together: once back in San Francisco and once with someone here in Boston. He hadn't ever asked directly, but Jack's renewed attention and immersion in their lives together made him both want to know and not want to know at the same time. In his darkest moments, Stuart wondered about Jack's business trips and drinks with business a.s.sociates that sometimes lasted until late into the night. Stuart himself had cheated once with a man he picked up in a bar just after he and Jack got together. He was, he supposed, testing the depths of his feelings for Jack as much as testing Jack's reaction-of course Stuart told him, and Jack was furious at him, not for the act itself, but for reporting it. "Who do you think I am, your little j.a.panese p.u.s.s.y? Why are you telling me this? If you lapse, that's something you deal with unless you're risking my safety in some way." A few days later, though, Jack came home and presented Stuart with a baby parakeet and launched into a discussion about fidelity.

Stuart cupped the tiny bird in his hands. "Am I supposed to cook or feed this?"

The evening ended with Jack's insistence on a monogamous, exclusive relationship. He made Stuart promise faithfulness and he pledged the same. Most of the time, Stuart believed that as an honorable man Jack could override his baser instincts.

"Try some," Jack said, blotting the plantains on a paper towel. He speared three slices at once and ate them, his eyes watering from the heat. "G.o.d, that brings back memories."

Jack was baiting him, Stuart knew. When he was feeling particularly feisty or frustrated, Jack started talking about Africa, about Tutti, the boy "who was as glossy as mahogany, so polished I could see my face in his biceps." Stuart thought maybe Tutti was an invention, like many of Jack's stories, a boy, perhaps, who guided him on one of his treks up a mountain. Jack had turned it into a torrid love affair over the years, gradually embellishing the tale until the ubiquitous Tutti was the great tragic love of his life.

"Wanna do something useful?" Stuart asked.

"Not now, dear, I have a wicked headache."

"There's fresh basil and garlic in the fridge. Make the salad. I still need to cook the cappellini."

"All righty. I think I'll slip into something more comfortable, though. I've had this monkey suit on long enough today."

"Okay. But can you step up the pace a bit? I'm feeling a bit harried. I still need to do the dessert and they'll be here in half an hour."

"Cool your zest." Jack picked up a handful of plantain slices, kissed Stuart on the cheek. "Back in a Gordon."

"What?" Stuart said.

"Back in a flash."

"And while you're at it, feed Loki. There's a new bag of seed under the cage."

They were halfway through the meal and into their second bottle of wine when Jane and Leila exchanged a conspiratorial look. Stuart and Jack both caught it, which made Leila color deeper.

"Okay chicas, let me say I know this visit isn't just for the pleasure of our company or for Stuart's fine cooking, which, by the way, is beyond superb." He raised his winegla.s.s in Stuart's direction. "I mean, really Jane, you see my ugly mug every day."

Jane and Leila both laughed. "Well, actually there is something we'd like to explore with you," Jane said. She was a tall redhead, with long, Pre-Raphaelite curls that hung nearly to her back. In candlelight, Stuart found her beautiful, but in less forgiving light her skin had a strange uneven texture, scaly-looking, as though she were recovering from a bad sunburn. Jane usually wore loose, drapey clothes in jewel tones, Eileen Fisher-type things for stylish overweight women, though she was in fact on the thin side of average. Tonight she was dressed in a prim, petal-pink dress that made her look like somebody's Sunday school teacher.

Stuart liked Leila less, though his opinion might have been tainted by the stories Jane told of her. She was attractive, with strong, even features, though the military-short hair, combat boots, and multiple piercings seemed to Stuart more like a self-conscious statement of her s.e.xuality than anything else. She was twenty-something, a domestic abuse counselor for some sort of women's program. She had a confident, self-contained air about her, which is what Jane reportedly first found appealing. "She's so poised for someone who isn't even thirty yet," Jane told Jack and Stuart the day she'd met Leila and claimed love at first sight. Jane, in her late thirties, had been through two troubled relationships in the year Jack and Stuart had known her. Katrina, the woman before Leila, had done a real number on her. Jack and Stuart both despised Katrina, a Croatian veterinarian who had lived all over the world, but mostly in Russia and Alaska, studying the seasonal feeding habits of reindeer and their possible links, through neuropeptide-y, to eating disorders in human beings-she talked about her research ad nauseum.

Jane grew so thin and unhinged over Katrina that she had had to take a leave of absence from work. Jane was, by everyone's a.s.sessment, brilliant. A summa c.u.m laude Stanford grad, funny and generous, but with such bad taste in lovers Stuart wondered about her sense of self-worth. What he liked best about her was that she spilled over a lot, risked looking foolish in the way many truly generous and kind people did. She thought nothing of cooking meals for former lovers who had treated her badly, or moving them in with her when they lost their jobs.