Gordie let out a cry of dismay. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. I am so sorry to hear that, Fenno.” More silence. “I always thought he was like this…old soul in the corner there, such a reassuring presence. You must miss him so much.”
Walter deduced that McLeod’s dog had died. Walter wasn’t much of a reader these days, though he still knew his plays, so he rarely entered McLeod’s place, but the man’s dog was as much “the bookshop dog” as Walter’s was “the restaurant dog”—half a block apart. Like The Bruce, Rodgie was a local personality on Bank Street, the two dogs longtime acquaintances through frequent sidewalk encounters. Whatever Walter might think of his owner, Rodgie was one of the few male dogs with whom The Bruce did not feel compelled to stage that tiresome growling face-off. While the two dogs had made their olfactory small talk (small sniff, could you call it that?), Walter and Fenno had exchanged more or less the same pointless information, updated: current climate, volume of business, the relentless rise in real estate prices; yada yada nada. Dog people in New York loved to brag about how their pets made them important connections, but no one ever mentioned how much tedious obligatory chitchat came with the package.
After Gordie said good-bye, at first he did not turn around. Perhaps something down on the street had captured his attention. But when he faced Walter again, he was wiping his eyes with a sleeve. “I apologize,” he said, with a small self-conscious laugh. “Excuse my emotions, I’m a bit of a sap, but a very nice dog I’ve known for ages died…. I should be glad it’s you I have here, shouldn’t I?” Gordie pulled a tissue from a box on his desk.
“It’s not a bit sappy. Sometimes I’m sure I’d be lost without The Bruce,” Walter said automatically. “He gets me up every morning. I know that.”
With deliberate gravity, Gordie turned his attention back to Walter’s papers. “So—I’m sorry—remind me about your objectives?”
“Well, it’s not as if I’m dying or anything like that.” Now it was Walter’s turn to feel awkward. “Oh dear. I didn’t mean to sound so glib.”
“I’m aware of my reputation,” said Gordie. “The fiscal undertaker, that’s what I’m called, even to my face. Sad but true. One client joked that he’s hung a sign by the checkout desk at his doctor’s office: RESERVE YOUR PLOT AND CALL GORDIE UNSWORTH.”
Walter rushed on: “So it’s just—well, I suppose it does have a lot to do with everyone dying around me. Not everyone—you know what I mean. Good grief, I can’t believe how rattled I am by all this. The point is, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it, to reach your forties and not have a will? Worse than not flossing your teeth.”
“I know parents with children in college who’ve never gotten around to a will. It’s a surprisingly hard thing to do.” Gordie spoke earnestly, without condescension. His eyes still glittered. Walter had underestimated Stuffy’s depth of feeling. Not the first time Walter got an F in character sleuthing.
So he relaxed. He explained to Gordie how the restaurant had done quite well these past few years, how he’d done nothing more creative with the surplus than dump it in a money market account with old-lady interest rates—and how, most important, he wanted to make sure that, should the accidental piano fall, his gas-guzzling Republican brother wouldn’t walk off with the profits.
Gordie held up a folder. “This tells me everything about the business?”
“Yes.”
“No partners, silent or talking?”
Walter hated this part. “Extremely silent now. I bought him out when he got sick. Four years ago.”
Gordie’s expression was one they had both seen too often: a look of dread, of pain, of a question you weren’t sure you should ask yet had to. How many times could you have this same ghoulish, plus ça change conversation?
Walter rescued him. “Two years more, he made it that long. He took the money and went to Key West. Had a devoted lover. Not me.” To hear himself speak of this tragedy so telegrammatically was depressing, but such shorthand had become a necessity in his world.
Gordie (who surely understood this shorthand better than anyone) said he was sorry, after which they observed the Respectful Moment of Silence.
“All right.” Gordie paged back and forth, back and forth. “Debts?”
“None.” In reply to Gordie’s admiring glance, Walter said, “I can’t pretend to be a wizard with money. But my grandmother was, and she left me just enough so I could cut up all that hateful plastic.”
Gordie’s smile was sly. “So I guess you’ll be paying me in more than a lifetime supply of beef bourguignon.”
Please let this be flirting, Walter thought.
Walter told Gordie about his nephew, his desire to leave a small gift to an animal charity, his fantasies for retirement. Walter had never been in therapy, but he imagined it must be quite a bit like this. At moments, he felt like a child talking about an imaginary friend. (Honestly now, who was this fellow daring to say that he dreamed of an old age on Cape Cod, a little house on the dunes? Dream on, buster!) But Gordie listened keenly, asked straightforward questions, never mocking. When Walter had finished reciting his fantasy life, Gordie began to explain about trusts and executors and mutual funds and things that Walter had always thought the province of movie stars, Mayflower descendants, and neighbors who monopolized four-story brownstones.
“To put it simply,” said Gordie, “you can’t just leave a three-star restaurant in New York City to a teenage boy who lives three thousand miles away. Or you can, but you might as well be leaving him an elephant or, for that matter, a circus. You see what I mean.”
Walter laughed. “‘Hey dudes, guess what? My queer uncle in New York City just left me an elephant! Like, awesome!’” He pictured the look on Werner’s face. He wished he did have an elephant he could leave to Scott.
“Not that you plan to go tomorrow—unless of course your piano phobia comes to fruition.”
“Or the proverbial plane goes down.”
“There’s that too,” said Gordie. “It happens.”
“Oh, enough of the gallows; I begin to worry about my precious karma—just in case there’s such a thing.”
By now, Gordie had rearranged Walter’s affairs into a tidy, prioritized stack. He stood and gave Walter a few pamphlets and a handwritten list of concerns to review before calling to make another appointment.
“Homework!” Walter exclaimed. He hadn’t realized he’d get to return so easily. “I guess it is like back-to-school, isn’t it?” Too late, he saw that this was a reference to the conversation with Fenno McLeod, not with him.
Gordie didn’t seem to notice. He stood by the window. “Have you seen my view? I have to show it off or it’s not worth the rent.”
Walter joined him. It was Friday, so the farmers’ market was in full autumnal swing, a sea of potted chrysanthemums and bushel after bushel of apples, pears, Fauvist gourds, and pumpkins with erotically fanciful stems. On one table stood galvinized buckets of the year’s final roses; on another, skeins of yarn in muted, soulful purples and reds. Walter loved this part of the season—and not just because it was the time of year his restaurant flourished, when people felt the first yearnings to sit by a fire, to eat stew and bread pudding and meatloaf, drink cider and toddies and cocoa. He loved the season’s transient intensity, its gaudy colors and tempestuous skies. It felt, to Walter, a lot like loving Shakespeare (which he always would, even if he’d memorized his last soliloquy several years ago now).
“Do you shop there?” said Gordie. “I hear all the best neighborhood restaurants order from farmers.”
“Hugo gets pheasants and squab from someone down there—corn and heirloom tomatoes in the summer. I leave all that to him, and just as well. Last spring he bought fiddlehead ferns. Well, I walked into the kitchen and shrieked. I thought I was looking at a bowl of dead caterpillars, that’s how much I know!”
“Look—are those dervishes?” Gordie pointed down at a performance, three dancers in red skirts pirouetting on a stretch of open asphalt.<
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From the side, Walter stole a concentrated look at Gordie’s face; it was so…kind. All its lines, still subtle, seemed to bookmark the places expressive of joy. Greet the morning early and with joy: Granna had embroidered that wisdom on a cushion. Walter leaned against it in bed when he watched the nightly news—never mind that, given the choice, he’d always rather sleep late.
He edged slowly closer to Gordie, till he sensed their sleeves just touching. Close enough to tell that Gordie did not wear cologne. Walter hated phony scents as much as he hated phony tans.
Gordie turned away from the window and reached out to shake Walter’s hand. “I like this—having really met you. It makes the city feel nice and small,” he said. “Stephen makes fun of me, but I’m someone who misses that part of living in the boonies.”
“Well, you’re in the minority there, dude—as my nephew would say—but you may be the wise one among us.” If he’d been honest, Walter would have agreed with Gordie, but he decided it wasn’t the note to end on, not this time. The calculations had begun.
When he left, he walked slowly, half dizzy, his brain buzzing like a hive, through the farmers’ market. The dancers had vanished. He examined the flowers and the yarns and the pumpkins up close, as if to make sure they weren’t all part of a heady dream. At one point, he looked up, just a furtive glance, to locate Gordie’s window, to see if he was being watched. He was stunned to see eight or nine stories of windows just like Gordie’s and could not remember which floor he’d been on. Up there, looking down, he’d felt as if the two of them were remote and alone, in a tower.
WHILE WALTER DYED HIS HAIR at the bathroom sink, The Bruce sat on the mat and watched. Funny how a dog could look puzzled (or angry or elated or grieving or guilty—all the same shades of emotion a person’s face could reveal). This was only the third time Walter had done it, so he was still nervous about the results. His hair remained thick and basically blond, but a few months ago he’d noticed that the color was looking a little dusty alongside his ears. He’d just turned forty-four, so this seemed fair—but still.
He was surprised how much he liked this new task, how the tinted water swirling down the drain made him feel as if he were purging himself—washing something away, not covering something up. He only hoped that, sometime in the future, he would recognize the point when the lines on his face began to mock his hair, shriek at the vain deceit. You should age with dignity, not denial: Granna had not said or stitched this, but she might have. Before she died, her face had been nothing but folds and creases; to Walter, it looked like the topographical map of some mystical place, like a terraced mountain in Tibet.
He assessed his newly gilded hair in the mirror. So far, so good. Perhaps the dregs of winter, however dreary, wouldn’t be so lonely after all.
“Now your turn,” he said to The Bruce. The dog trotted briskly back to the bedroom, vaulting his stocky frame up onto the bed. Walter sat beside him and took the soft brush and the currycomb out of his nightstand. Like so many purebreds, The Bruce had a few chronic maladies; the worst was his eczema, for which Walter had creams and shampoos and special grooming utensils. Probably because he itched a good deal of the time, the poor dog loved all this close attention. “Does that feel good, lovey?” Walter crooned as he pushed the currycomb through T.B.’s short coat. The hair was a uniform grayish beige, but his skin resembled the hide of a pinto pony, pinkish white with patches of black. As Walter brushed him, the dog grunted vaguely—a canine purr—and drooled onto the towel Walter had placed beneath his head.
Walter had adopted T.B. as an older puppy. The shelter volunteer who helped him make his choice was a girl around Scott’s age who wore lipstick the color of pot roast. (Was there nothing attractive left to be cool? Had fashion tripped into a black hole, or was Walter just too old?) “People hate dogs that drool, they think it’s gross,” she said as they looked into the cage, “but he’s way cute. Looks a lot like Bruce Willis, if you ask me.”
This had amused Walter greatly. “Well, if you ask me, Bruce Willis is anything but cute, and I doubt he’d be flattered. Man or dog.”
Every Tuesday and every other Saturday, a misanthropic young woman named Sonya came by to borrow T.B., taking him to a nursing home in the Bronx, where he let the oldsters coddle him for hours. Sonya had that hackneyed Morticia Addams look, powdery skin and shoe-black hair, and smelled like stale cumin. When he attempted small talk, just about the only thing Walter got out of her was that she worked for some off-the-grid animal welfare group called—valiantly, he did not laugh—The True Protectors. Shades of Flash Gordon.
Walter went along for the first visit, just to make sure this theoretically Samaritan act was on the up-and-up. One of his regular customers had suggested this enterprise, pointing out that T.B. was perfectly suited because he was so well socialized. Walter, who’d been feeling guilty that he did not “give back,” was happy to make T.B. his proxy.
Thus did Walter—after a silent ride with the unpleasantly perfumed Sonya, for whom gum snapping was evidently preferable to speech—find himself one balmy weekend on a narrow balcony in Riverdale, overlooking the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, telling a pair of proud grandmas about his own Granna, playing gin rummy for pocket change, drinking sherry that tasted like stagnant Pepsi, and allowing himself to be quite absurdly flirted with. After that, he sent The Bruce back there alone. It pleased Walter to think of T.B. conducting his own private social life in a separate borough.
Tuesdays, Sonya arrived at seven, Saturdays at ten. She would pick up The Bruce and return him almost without a word to Walter, but if he looked out his front window after she took the dog downstairs, he’d see her nattering sweetly away as she settled him in the back of her van. That was one very odd girl.
Saturday was the only day Walter wasn’t the first one in at work. He loved arriving to the smell of eggs and pancake batter and, this time of year, two newly laid fires. Today he surveyed the brunch reservations and snipped the dead flowers off the cyclamen plants inside the front window. At eleven he unlocked the door; the first customer to walk through it was Bonny.
“Greetings, neighbor,” said Walter. “What brings you to Casa Cholesterol? Dating a gaucho?” The first time Fenno McLeod had come into the restaurant, along with an older woman, they’d looked at the menu and joked that some witty individual they’d known would have given this nickname to Walter’s Place. Walter felt briefly offended—but it was accurate, was it not? Heart Attack Central, an otherwise benevolent reviewer had called it, but Walter liked Bonny’s version better.
“Dates are for after dark,” said McLeod. “Most days I eat fruit for breakfast, but I’m in the mood for eggs Benedict.”
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of people who never get laid,” said Walter.
McLeod gave him a stiff smile. Oh gosh, thought Walter, I forgot about that Conan Doyle walking stick stuck up your bottom. Not a bad bottom, though, if one were to steal a glimpse.
They did the requisite weather dance—Wasn’t March always a letdown, a tease? Those poor little crocuses, hoodwinked again! Well yes, jolly so, but the Ewe Kay; well, there it would be bloody cold and twice as damp—and then McLeod laid a book on the table. How anyone could read while eating (even the newspaper) was a mystery to Walter. It was always an awkward mess: dabs of grease on the pages, a crick in your neck.
The two waiters were busy in back, so Walter brought out the wooden box of tea bags himself. Brits rarely drank coffee. None of that when-in-Rome stuff for imperial them. McLeod chose Lapsang souchong as Walter wondered if seeing this man would always, now, remind him of Gordie, of the way Walter had fallen for Gordie’s sentimental reaction to the death of a dog. He wished Granna had stitched a sampler to warn him against such emotional triggers. Lovers of animals doth not make the very best lovers of men. Too wordy. Beware ye the tears of easy sentiment. Better. Falleth not for married men. Far more to the point. And blameth not the poor departed bookshop dog.
The first week of Oct
ober—the week between his first and second meetings with Gordie—had been agony undistilled, bliss transcendent. Every night, in vain, Walter had hoped that Gordie and what’s-his-name would return to the restaurant so that he could assess the surely obvious cracks in their conjugal veneer. Finally, having tucked his homework in a new manila folder, having changed his clothes twice, Walter walked to Union Square. The sky was a moody rush of lavender clouds, reflecting the state of his nerves. Voolishness, voolishness, voolishness, he heard Granna say in her small but confident voice with that shameless Wagnerian accent.
Nothing is going to happen, you idiot: that from Walter himself.
But all it took was the onset of the storm. They had been at their places on either side of the desk (and yes, he had brought T.B. along this time; the dog lay firmly ensconced in a sofa cushion) when the first crack of thunder sounded and the first flash of lightning lit the room like an opalescent strobe. A wind, out of nowhere, lashed at the sycamores in the park. The branches thrashed frantically, as if the trees were attempting to flee, and their leaves tore away in swarms. A spectacle of nature the two men had certainly seen before, but it drew them to the window like children. “Oh!” Walter cried out when a large limb cracked off and fell to the ground. Gordie turned toward him, and they stared at each other, neither laughing nor solemn, mutually strange in that strange green light. Puzzled, perhaps, but then they were in each other’s arms—their mouths fervently joined—and then on that welcoming couch (rudely displacing The Bruce) and then on that parking lot of an oriental rug.
Gordie’s skin was as smooth and hot as an oven door. With a distant surprise—irrelevant to the turmoil of their abrupt entanglement—Walter noticed, in glimpses, that Gordie’s back and arms were manically freckled. If they had revealed their bodies more slowly to each other, this might have put Walter off, but his desire, returned so swiftly, could only gain momentum.
Gordie issued terse questions, but softly, about just what Walter needed: “Like that? Tell me…there, just there? Yes, baby, there…” Walter was quite beyond words yet touched by all this urgent thoughtfulness. The only words he could summon, and only in his mind, were those for body parts: knee, elbow, shoulder, thigh…and several others for which Granna would have to forgive him. He would later reflect on how courtly Gordie had been—if you could be courtly, hot, and aggressive all at once.