Page 63 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
In bed, Patrick kisses the sunburned curve of Nathaniel’s shoulder, the sharp edge of his collarbone. Nathaniel’s hands are on him now, exploring and insistent.
As Patrick gets the rest of their clothes off, he takes an inventory of all the places Nathaniel likes being kissed, the places where his breath hitches when Patrick’s fingers make contact: the hinge of his jaw, the small of his back, the curve of his ass in the palm of Patrick’s hand. He makes a noise that sounds pleased and surprised when Patrick kisses the spot under his ear, like maybe he didn’t know he liked that until now, and that thought makes the heat in the room go from summer-warm to something incandescent.
Patrick braces himself over Nathaniel on one arm, then thinks better of it and lets Nathaniel feel his weight—it isn’t lost on him that Nathaniel’s spent the last half hour paying attention to his shoulders and his arms, the breadth of his chest. If he likes Patrick’s size, then he can have it.
He doesn’t know if it’s possible to have sex so good it eradicates the memory of sex that felt wrong or made you feel wrong. He doubts it’s as simple as making sure Nathaniel remembers he’s with a man—if that was what Nathaniel needed, that’s probably what he’d have asked for. If Patrick had to guess, he’d say that Nathaniel doesn’t exactly know what he needs.
He bends his head and brings his mouth to Nathaniel’s nipple, kissing it almost reverently, then sucking it into his mouth. Nathaniel makes a shocked sound, then one of his hands lands on the back of Patrick’s head, keeping him there.
Patrick gets a thigh between Nathaniel’s legs. “Just like this. Okay?” Nathaniel presses up, looking for friction, and Patrick gives it to him. He shifts them around a little, putting his hand where his mouth was, and kisses Nathaniel’s neck, his jaw, his mouth. The slide of their bodies makes Patrick groan. At the sound, Nathaniel moves one of his legs aside, making room.
Patrick’s been where Nathaniel is, and if you put your mind to it, you can imagine that you’re getting fucked. He doesn’tknow if that’s what Nathaniel’s thinking, but the possibility that he might be is enough to make Patrick’s mind go blank.
When Nathaniel comes, he muffles the sound of it in Patrick’s shoulder, then lies back, panting and glassy-eyed, the angles of his face stark and lovely in the half light from the hall. Patrick finishes himself off, aware of Nathaniel watching, then collapses messily onto him. Silently, he starts counting.
Before he gets to thirty, Nathaniel pushes at him. “We need showers.”
Patrick smiles into the skin of Nathaniel’s neck, delighted to be right, delighted to know this man well enough to guess. He rolls away and starts the shower.
“Stay,” Patrick says after they’ve cleaned up. “In my bed.”
Nathaniel is still in Patrick’s bed the next morning, cranky and incoherent, the way he is every morning. Patrick puts on the coffee and they get ready for the day, then Patrick opens the shop while Nathaniel gets Eleanor. It’s like the pattern of the last five months has simply shifted around a few degrees, all the pieces precisely where they belong, solid enough that Patrick can nearly trick himself into believing it could stay this way.
IV
Something Fierce and Terrible
Nathaniel
19
“It’s a yes or no question,” Susan says, and Nathaniel realizes he’s been staring at the kitchen cabinets for long enough that Susan’s finished washing the bottles. Nathaniel picks up a bottle and starts to dry it. “Do you want to play a few songs at the Gaslight next week or not?”
“Are you sure you need me?”
“I’d lose at least half the spookiness without the violin.” She pulls the plug from the sink and the suds swirl down the drain. “Also, you wrote some of those songs.”
“It’s more like I was in the room while you wrote them.” Nathaniel has a realistic view of their relative contributions. He’s helped, but mainly he does what Susan tells him.
Susan snorts. “I’ve written plenty of songs in the same room as useless people and that wasn’t what we were doing. What if I made a record? What ifwemade a record? Would you want to do that?”
“Yes,” Nathaniel says, surprised by how easily that answer came. Being a folk musician—or whatever it is Susan and he are doing—isn’t exactly his life’s ambition. But it’s not like his ambitions have done him any good. Doing this, he’s useful to Susan and he’s having fun.
She puts away the bottles that Nathaniel dried. “Then play a few songs with me at the Gaslight as a dry run. You can lurk in the shadows if you’re feeling shy.”
“I’m notshy,” Nathaniel says, and flicks her with the wet dish towel.
“Prove it.”
When Nathaniel got off the train in the wretched new Penn Station last December, he’d meant to get a hotel room, take some flowers to the graveyard, and then—there’s where things got hazy. Maybe he’d jump out the hotel window. Maybe he’d swallow some pills. Maybe there was some other way to take his leave from the mess he made of his life without causing too much inconvenience for the hotel maids.
He hadn’t even gotten as far as booking the hotel room. He couldn’t leave the train station without the sudden, visceral conviction that he was going to be snatched off the street and sent to a secret prison in Panama. Addled, he walked in the wrong direction and in short order got mugged by a couple of teenagers by the piers. In his confused state, he’d thought they were agents sent to take him away. When they left with only his luggage, wallet, and overcoat, he was only more befuddled. They hadn’t even taken the file, rolled up and tucked inside his suit jacket.
Cold and frightened, he headed away from the water. When it started to rain, he stepped into a shop that seemed safely empty. It was a bookshop, and behind the counter was an elderly lady. When she asked him if he needed help, Nathaniel said that of course he didn’t need help, and somehow within fifteen minutes was being bundled into Mrs. Kaplan’s station wagon and whisked off to a warm house in Queens. His suit was ruined, but the files barely got wet.
Now he’s trying to figure out whether agreeing to perform on stage with Susan Larkin, using his own first name, is the bloodless form of suicide he was looking for all those months ago. Is he daring the agency to come and get him?
But even in his more paranoid moments, Nathaniel has to admit this makes no sense. The CIA can’t assassinate, imprison, or otherwise neutralize every disgruntled former employee—and Nathaniel can’t be the only disgruntled former employee. By the time he left, nearly all the analysts he knew thought the U.S. had to get out of Vietnam—or at least would point to the intelligence and say that the war was unwinnable, which amounts to the same thing.
