Page 54 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“Let’s go someplace new.”
“There’s a twenty-four-hour diner on Twenty-second Street, if you’re up for a walk.”
They put on shoes and jackets and head toward Eighth Avenue. This neighborhood doesn’t really quiet down until last call at four o’clock, and then it wakes up again two hours later, so right now there are about the same number of people on the sidewalks as you’d see in a smaller city in the middle of the afternoon.
When they get to Twenty-second Street, there’s no sign of a diner, twenty-four-hour or otherwise. Either he got the location wrong or the diner shut down.
“There’ll be something at Times Square, if you don’t mind walking twenty minutes more. And if you don’t mind a little sordidness.”
“I love sordidness almost as much as I love pancakes.”
Patrick snorts.
“I’m serious. I like the reminder that there’s another way.”
“Another way from what?”
“The right way,” Nathaniel says, the wordrightsoaked through with scorn. “I wasted so much time making myself into the precise sort of person I thought I was supposed to be, and it didn’t do me any good. It didn’t do anyone any good.”
It occurs to Patrick that whatever Nathaniel’s doing right now, it’s a choice. Whatever life he used to have, he could go back, or he could get steady work as a session musician. Instead he’s sleeping in Patrick’s miserable spare room and debating the finer points of guitar tuning with Susan. It might have started as a last resort but at some point Nathaniel decided to stay, or maybe just decided not to leave—or at least decided to stick around for a while.
“People don’t always choose the other way, you know,” Patrick says. “The hustlers and junkies might love the chance to have a pension and a mortgage.”
“True.” They’re silent for a minute, the only sounds their shoes on the sidewalk and the sporadic hum of sparse nighttime traffic. “Did you make a choice?” Nathaniel asks.
“I dropped out of high school.”
“Was that a choice?”
“I could have gone back to my aunt and uncle’s house and finished school,” Patrick says. “They didn’t kick me out.” He could have finished school; he could have done anything other than leave Michael alone with his aunt and uncle.
“You know,” Nathaniel says, “you don’t usually try to bullshit me.”
“I could have gone back to school,” Patrick repeats. “And I didn’t.” He used to think he should go to night school and maybe eventually get a college degree, but he had a job he liked; a degree seemed pointless. Sometimes he still thinks he should have tried anyway, should have taken the path that would leadtoward a job at an insurance firm or someplace else boring and safe.
“Why not?”
That job at the insurance firm would have come with scrutiny and would have meant having a double life. Right now, Patrick doesn’t have to hide, he doesn’t have to worry about getting fired, he doesn’t even have to worry about awkward interactions with his colleagues. “I think I would have been miserable if I’d tried to have that kind of life,” Patrick says, very gently.
As they get further uptown, the sidewalks empty out. He wouldn’t think twice if he was by himself. He’s never been mugged, maybe because of his size or because he doesn’t look like someone who has money, or maybe he’s just gotten lucky. “Do you want to turn around and go to the Waverly?”
“Let’s keep going,” Nathaniel says.
“It’s seedy,” Patrick says when they get closer. “Just warning you. There are hustlers and prostitutes. Peep shows. Dirty movies.”
Nathaniel makes a dismissive sound, but when they reach Times Square he goes still, looking up at the flashing signs, the billboards, the lights. There’s an enormous advertisement for Gordon’s, in which a bottle about the size of a city bus pours gin into a rocks glass. Right next to it is a billboard for another liquor. There are also at least four shoe stores, for some reason.
Patrick turns away from the signs and looks at Nathaniel, his face illuminated by the yellow lights.
“There’s the diner,” Nathaniel says.
It has exactly the sort of clientèle you’d expect at this hour: prostitutes, alone or in pairs; a few solitary middle-aged men; a group of giggling kids who look like they stopped here on the way home from a nightclub; some men in coveralls having lunch during the night shift. It’s not a cheerful crowd, but most places get a little moody during that no man’s land between late nightand early morning. The air is thick with cigarette smoke and burned coffee. Frank Sinatra plays tinnily on the radio.
“Has it always been like this?” Nathaniel asks after they order their pancakes. Patrick doesn’t need him to clarify exactly what he means.
“For the past ten years, maybe fifteen years, at least,” Patrick says. “When I was in high school, there was an article in the paper about how this area was filled with undesirables, and I knew what that meant”—he points both thumbs at himself—“so I got on the train as soon as school let out.”
“Didn’t waste any time.”
