Page 87 of Exquisite Things
I don’t dare say what I’m thinking. Which is that living true shouldn’t mean taking such unnecessary risks. I know Maud will end up just like Uncle Alton if she goes out there. She’s a butch Black lesbian. She’s everything they fear. I want to protect her, and I also know that expressing that will feel like the opposite of love. It will come across like I want to control her. Put her in another kind of prison.
Lily pulls some lipstick out of a kitchen drawer.
Azalea sees an opportunity for a mood change and takes it. “Girl, why do you keep lipstick next to your forks?”
Lily raises a shoulder coyly. “A lady must have lipstick handy everywhere.” With that, she puts the first piece of her face on. Turns to me and Bram with glossy red lips. “You two go upstairs and get yourself ready for a beautiful Valentine’s Day.” She hands me a vase. “Be sure to put those in water right away. Wouldn’t want them to die.”
As Bram and I head upstairs, that horrible word lingers in my mind. Die. Death. It will happen to them. Inevitably. Maud, Lily, Archie, Azalea, all of them. These people I now love. Just as I loved Mother and Brendan, and they’re gone.
I feel, for the first time since following Bram into his new life, a sincere and painful pang of regret. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to welcome all this love. It will only end, like all the most beautiful concertos, in the melancholy silence that longs to recapture the beauty that’s passed forever.
Bram. London. Valentine’s Day. 1981.
We shower together. He holds me from behind. Soaps my body up. I get the sense he doesn’t want to look at me. That he’s hiding. I felt so vital when I walked into the house. Roses in one hand. Poetry in the other. Love in my heart. Connected to him. To life. Now he feels distant from me. Even as his skin pushes against mine.
He squeezes some shampoo out of a tube and rubs it into my hair.
“That smells like soup. I swear, Lily and her antiaging potions.”
He doesn’t laugh. He’s in no mood for jokes.
“We shouldn’t go.” I speak the words quietly. Wonder if he heard me over the sound of the shower jets.
“Shouldn’t go protest?” He speaks directly into my ear. “Or shouldn’t go on the trip I spent months planning for us?”
“Oliver, don’t be like this.” I immediately regret saying it. He’s only being himself. Scared. Averse to risk.
“Be like what exactly?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”
“I want to know. Like what? Tell me? What am Ibeing like? Like... oh, maybe like a person who actually has an opinion of his own? Doesn’t just follow you around like a lapdog?”
“Oliver, what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?” I attempt lightness. But my question only magnifies the vast expanse of energy between us. I don’t understand him anymore. Perhaps I never did.
“It doesn’t matter.” He lets go of me. I don’t move. I’m the one hiding now. I keep my gaze on the chipped tiles of the shower. A herringbone mosaic pattern I let myself get lost in. The countless shapes the same pattern can make. Depending on how it’s perceived.
“Have you thought about what would happen if we end up in prison?” Oliver grabs my shoulders and spins me around. “What would the guards say when they realize we don’t age? What will this government that’s so willing to sacrifice their own do with us, do you think?”
“I—I don’t know.” It’s not a thought that’s crossed my mind. I suppose it should have. They raid queer bars. They lure men into toilets, then arrest them for cottaging.
“Well, I know.” He turns the shower faucet until the water is freezing cold. He needs it to cool the heat inside him. “They’ll try to kill us out of fear. Then they’ll realize we’re indestructible. Which is what they long to be. Then they’ll use us.”
“Use us? How?”
“I don’t know. As soldiers. Or spies or assassins. As—as—as something that will give them more power. If I were evil enough to mastermind such a thing, then I would be a president or a prime minister or in charge of some sort of empire!”
“So it’s not Maud you’re concerned about? It’s you—”
“Oh, don’t accuse me of being selfish. Not you, the most selfish person I know.” He exits the shower. There’s still foam on his lower back.
“That was harsh.” I whisper the words. I’m not sure he hears them.
Oliver grabs a damp towel hanging from the door. It’s blackwith bright pink palm trees on it. He dries himself ferociously. Like his skin is covered with insects. “And how dare you accuse me of not caring for Maud? Or for you. We’re happy. Finally, we’re happy. Why would we risk all that right now? For what?”
“I don’t know. For a more just world.” I hear myself say the words. I’m not sure I believe them. The world has always been unjust. Always will be. Destruction and injustice will survive as long as human beings do.
“Good luck with that.”
