Page 44 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
Nathaniel makes a doubtful noise.
Plenty of New Yorkers treat visiting the outer boroughs like going on safari. Patrick used to think it was because they thought they were too good for it, but now he realizes it’s because they don’t understand the bus system outside Manhattan. Which is fair, because neither does Patrick. But he doubts that’sNathaniel’s rationale—he doesn’t understand public transit within Manhattan either. This will be the farthest Nathaniel has been from the shop since he got here.
A month ago, Patrick would have been patient and gentle and understanding, but now he knows what Nathaniel looks like when he wants a push. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Patrick says. “You can go to Queens, you snob.”
They wind up on an especially wrecked Queens-bound subway car. This spring, graffiti artists are going all out. Either that, or the city doesn’t have the money to paint over and scrub off the graffiti.
Patrick always expects Nathaniel to be put off by these signs of decay. After all, he keeps the shop in an unnatural state of cleanliness. He tends to stare at litter and graffiti, wads of gum ground into the pavement, cab drivers swearing at one another across traffic. But Patrick is all too familiar with Nathaniel’s less impressed expressions, and right now he looks perfectly content.
Patrick points to a crude drawing. “People drew dicks on the walls of Pompeii.”
“We’re participating in a great human tradition,” Nathaniel agrees. “An unbroken chain of penis graffiti dating back thousands of years.”
Patrick’s aunt and uncle used to bring him and Michael into the city twice a year: once to visit his uncle’s office, once to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, boxes ticked off on some imaginary How To Do The Bare Minimum By Your Orphaned Relations checklist. The New York City of the early fifties was bright and sparkling, steel and glass, everything gleaming with the polish of prosperity. Everyone wore hats and had their shoes shined, and Patrick sat on the subway with his hands folded in his lap like he was in church. The trash didn’t dare linger on the streets, and cabbies didn’t shout, and neither of those things can possibly be true but Patrick will swear by them anyway.
In 1958, when he realized he couldn’t go home—or that the city was his home, now—the shine hadn’t worn off quite yet. Only in the last few years has he really had the sense that he’s in a place that’s past its prime.
But the seedier this town gets, the more it feels like home. He doesn’t have any business with bright and sparkling; he doesn’t want to wear a hat or get his shoes shined, either literally or metaphorically. Fifteen years ago, there was barely room in this city for people like him, or at least that’s how it felt. Maybe a place needs a layer of grime and an aura of rot before anyone’s willing to cede territory to the undesirables.
Their seats are in the upper deck behind third base.
“I’ll get some beer,” Patrick says.
“Priorities,” Nathaniel agrees.
When Patrick gets back, Nathaniel is regarding the field with an odd expression. When the game starts, Nathaniel leans forward in his seat, his hands clutching his knees, Patrick still holding both beers. The first three innings pass like this, Nathaniel studying the game with a strange intensity, and Patrick wishing he had binoculars to get a good look at that shortstop.
“The Mets,” Nathaniel finally says, taking the beer that Patrick presses into his hand. “The Mets didn’t exist the last time I watched a baseball game.”
“What team did you root for?” Patrick asks, taking advantage of Nathaniel being in the mood to talk about his life.
“Growing up, the Red Sox.”
“Oh, so you really are from Boston?”
“I grew up in Vermont,” he says easily, having evidently forgotten that he once said he was from Boston. “I had a boss who always had Senators games on in his office. He’d make people stand behind the television and read their reports.”
“That doesn’t seem like a great way to watch baseball or do a job.”
“Patrick, you have no idea.”
It’s a weeknight game, early in the season, so the stands aren’t full. Around them, empty seats give the illusion of privacy.
Nathaniel leans back and puts his feet up on the back of an empty seat in front of them. “Once or twice a year,” he says, something taut in his voice that’s belied by the looseness of his posture, “we’d drive up to see the Orioles play the Yankees. My ex-wife was a Yankees fan.” He takes a sip of beer, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
Patrick isn’t sure whether he’s more surprised Nathaniel was married or that he’s mentioning it. “Is that what went wrong?” he asks, because he doesn’t know how else to ask if the divorce is what made Nathaniel lose his mind a little.
“We got divorced in ‘62,” Nathaniel says. Patrick assumes that’s ano.
Patrick flags down the beer man and buys two more overpriced Rheingolds. Then he gets some ice cream from the next vendor who passes by. Beer and ice cream might not be a decent dinner, but he’s glad to see Nathaniel eating something.
“How long were you married?” Patrick asks.
“Three years.”
The next question, the obvious question, isdo you have any kids. If Nathaniel got divorced in ‘62 and he was married for three years, his kids wouldn’t be older than eight or nine. The world is filled with men who walk away from their families, but Patrick can’t imagine that Nathaniel wouldn’t even send a postcard. He remembers how firmly Nathaniel insisted he had nobody to write to, nobody who was worried about him.
But he remembers, also, Susan asking how Nathaniel learned to take care of newborns. Patrick hopes he’s added all of thatup and come to the wrong conclusions, but the way Nathaniel’s hand is clenched on his thigh tells its own story.
